'Your life is over, bitch'

This story is publishing nearly seven years after the first domestic violence allegations against former MLB star Mike Clevinger became public. Pursuing this story as a freelance journalist forced me to confront the myriad struggles that come when telling complex stories about allegations of violence against women, especially when they involve alleged and so-called “imperfect victims." Fortunately, eyeblack’s partnership with beehiiv’s Media Collective further empowers our publication to lean into these stories and embrace their complications.

I’m thrilled to announce I’ve joined this program. I hope you will continue reading, sharing, and investing to ensure the work continues. - BWD

In 2015, Major League Baseball and the players union created its Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy. Since then, a majority of players the league has confirmed it probed under its policy have been suspended.

This February, the Pittsburgh Pirates gave one of a small handful of players who evaded a league suspension a chance to make the team.

Once a heralded pitcher for the Cleveland Guardians, the Pirates signed Mike Clevinger to a minor league contract¹ and gave the veteran a long look with the big league spring training roster. It is Clevinger’s third deal since MLB’s investigation, a process which ran from July 2022 to March 2023, became public knowledge.

The public learned of the investigation in January 2023 when Olivia Finestead, Clevinger’s former fiancée and mother of his youngest child, began accusing him of domestic violence and child abuse on social media. Finestead claimed Clevinger strangled her before locking her and their child out of their home. She shared photos of bruises on her pregnant stomach to her Instagram, which she said came from the pitcher throwing an iPad. She backed up her experience with alleged screenshots of conversations with other women who said Clevinger assaulted and harassed them.

Clevinger’s attorney, Tina Miller, told eyeblack that “any portrayal of Mr. Clevinger as an abuser is demonstrably false and inaccurate” and referred to MLB’s “exhaustive” investigation “that imposed no discipline.” Miller pointed eyeblack to Clevinger’s restraining order petition, where the pitcher claimed that Finestead stalked and harassed him and the mother of his two older children. The petitions filed by Clevinger and his other co-parent, which eyeblack obtained, referenced hundreds of texts Finestead sent from multiple numbers. In August 2023, the court granted both of them 15-year restraining orders. “The court record tells the accurate story — I encourage anyone seeking the truth to read it,” Miller stated.²

When MLB announced on March 5, 2023 that it would not discipline Clevinger, the commissioner’s office called the decision final “barring the receipt of any new information or evidence.” But, Finestead claims Clevinger continued abusing her. And that MLB failed to keep its word.

Finestead says she told an MLB investigator that not only did Clevinger harass her a month after the investigation closed, but that she possessed footage of the pitcher threatening her life ³ an hour before he started an April 19 game for the Chicago White Sox. She told MLB that she reported the harassment to the police. She insists that the misconduct she captured was consistent with patterns of alleged violence and harassment women have accused Clevinger of during every stop of his MLB career. Yet, despite informing the league about her recording and other alleged incidents of Clevinger of violating the league’s domestic violence policy, MLB didn’t reopen its investigation.

CW: The video contains profane and threatening language.

Clevinger made his debut with the White Sox in April 2023, a month after MLB cleared him to play. During an April 14 game against the Baltimore Orioles, Clevinger used Kanye West’s hit song “Gold Digger” as his warm-up music and shut down a reporter’s question about his song choice.⁴

Like many fans, Finestead saw Clevinger’s unexplained use of “Gold Digger” as a dig against her. But she also says the scene was a public manifestation of the pitcher’s ongoing private harassment.

On April 12—two days before the “Gold Digger” start and the same day Clevinger requested a restraining order—Finestead said an anonymous Instagram account with the handle @texbootslove⁵ started antagonizing her. “Shut the absolute fuck up you dumbass cunt,” wrote the account in direct messages Finestead posted to social media. In another: “Congrats! No one believed you! Dumbass bitch.”

The account referenced personal details about Finestead’s location and family. “Let me know what happens in your life the next 24 hours,” wrote @texbootslove, promising a visit from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) and naming Williamson County, where she lived with her one-year-old child. The anonymous messenger also told her to get ready to be tested for drug use: “reason 1 to lose your child!” 

Finestead says her week played out exactly as @texbootslove predicted: a DCS caseworker arrived at her Williamson County, Tennessee apartment and required her to take a drug test, which she said she passed.⁶

Concurrently, Finestead said she received a barrage of calls from a blocked number her iPhone labeled as “No Caller ID.” She posted screenshots of her phone’s call log on social media and identified it as Clevinger. On April 19, Finestead told eyeblack she finally answered the caller. The voice she said she heard was unmistakably Clevinger’s, and he was telling her to kill herself. She said she grabbed her iPad to record what she could.

During Finestead’s first clip, a male voice tells her she’s a “drug-addict” and “fucking prostitute,” and warns her that he was “coming for” her child, identifying the child Clevinger fathered by name.⁷

“I’ve never hurt you,” the caller claims before declaring: “Your life is over, bitch.” 

Finestead replied, “Mike, you sent child services to my house!”

In the second clip from the call Finestead provided to eyeblack, the caller shared his intent to reveal text messages where he accused her of stalking and harassing. “The cops are looking for you as is, Olivia,” the caller says. “The cops are coming for you as is. So all this stalking and harassing you're doing, you're going to jail now.”

The videos show a caller on Finestead’s phone labeled No Caller ID that she repeatedly identified during the conversation as Clevinger, with her face reflecting from the phone. According to the footage Finestead provided to eyeblack, she took the call around 10:47 am CT—roughly an hour before Clevinger took taken the mound to start a game at Citizens Bank Park against the Philadelphia Phillies. eyeblack obtained a Franklin (Tennessee) Police Department that shows Finestead also reported the anonymous call the same day. (eyeblack provided Finestead’s footage to Clevinger’s attorney, Tina Miller and his agent, Anthony LoVerde. Neither answered questions regarding the identity of the caller.)

After the call, Finestead told eyeblack that she informed Mehtab Brar, an MLB investigator who handled her investigation, that Clevinger told her to kill herself “over and over” on the phone call, called child services on her, and that she also filed a police report.

“He called CPS on me I filed another report of harassment last week because the no caller ID calls won't stop. I want this to end,” Finestead texted Brar in screenshots she shared with eyeblack, showing the investigator her iPhone’s thumbnails of her recordings. “He's driving me to a very dark place. This stuff makes people want to die this isn't ok.”

Brar replied with a one-page resource sheet compiled by MLB including numbers to call for help, and asked Finestead to send the recordings. “I'm not sending any of them to you,” replied Finestead. “You failed me You’re [sic] player is repeating over and over for me to kill my self [sic] This is harassment and abuse.” Finestead’s alleged text screenshots do not show Brar responding.⁸

Calls and messages Finestead characterized as threats continued throughout the 2023 season. On August 30th, 2023 at 2:13 am ET ⁹, two weeks after Pinellas County courts granted Clevinger a restraining order against Finestead, she said the pitcher called and texted her again with more threats, including pressuring her to recant her claims that he abused her.

“He was like, ‘I'm coming after [our child],’ Finestead said Clevinger told her. “‘Everything is your fault and I'm gonna show you how.’” She said she hung up on Clevinger, and figured he was reeling from the White Sox placing him on waivers—a procedural move that potentially leads to a team releasing or trading a player. The next day, Finestead said she texted him out of concern for his health, worried he was using drugs. Clevinger told Finestead that her message, which she claims was a response to his call, “could put you in jail” because it violated his new restraining order against her.

When Finestead replied by asking him to commit to a co-parenting agreement, Clevinger replied: “Until you tell the truth publicly nothing will change. I will get the truth out there though. I Promise. And I promise I will get my baby.”

eyeblack asked Miller about Clevinger’s alleged call and provided Finestead’s screenshot of the text exchange, but the pitcher’s attorney did not address specific questions about the conversation.

Amy Kaufman, an advocate for victims of intimate partner violence and survivor of a abusive relationship to baseball journalist Jonah Keri, told eyeblack that she experienced a familiar dynamic to the one Finestead alleged. “I was in a situation in my marriage where I was told that the only way that he would bring the child back to me was if I sent him a text message saying I abused [him]. So, there was a message that I sent to him saying I abused [him].”

After eyeblack reached out in March of this year, MLB also did not answer questions regarding any of Finestead’s allegations of threats or harassments that she said happened after the league closed its investigation on the baseball star. Instead, league spokesperson Michael Teevan defended the process of MLB’s already-completed probe.

“As we announced at the time, the comprehensive investigation included interviews of more than 15 individuals, in addition to Mr. Clevinger and the complainant, as well as a review of available documents, such as thousands of electronic communication records. Mr. Clevinger agreed to submit to evaluations by the joint treatment boards,” referring to a league and union-run drug-treatment program “composed of medical professionals specializing in substance abuse.”

eyeblack also requested interviews with Brar and Moira Weinberg, MLB’s executive vice president of investigations and security, to explain their investigative process. The league declined, citing the “confidentiality provisions” of its policy.

Clevinger’s agent, Anthony LoVerde, leaned on MLB’s investigation that, again, concluded before Finestead alleged his client threatened her throughout the 2023 season. “Michael cooperated fully with [MLB’s] investigation and was cleared of any wrongdoing,” LoVerde told eyeblack.

Miller stressed that Clevinger has not “had contact with Olivia Finestead since 2023” and pointed to MLB’s investigation. Miller did not address eyeblack’s questions about whether Clevinger called Finestead on April 19 or August 30th, or his alleged messages, or whether he was involved with allegedly reporting Finestead to Tennessee DCS.

“He has a 15-year Final Judgment of Injunction for Protection Against Stalking against [Finestead] entered by a Florida court in 2023, and…has recently had to go back to court to seek relief for her continued inexplicable conduct. The order and the accompanying court filings reveal documented evidence of threats she made against his minor children, among countless other violations.”